Batman: Arkham Knight is 'real next-gen,' map is five times the size of Arkham City

"Obviously, you see a lot of games that are cross-gen, and they feel a bit reined in because of that."

Unlikes its predecessor, Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Knight is exclusive to the next-gen. It's one of the first games to ditch cross-gen, focusing exclusively on harnessing the power of the new consoles. "Obviously, you see a lot of games that are cross-gen, and they feel a bit reined in because of that," director Sefton Hill said. "Because we were able to make that decision quite early, we were able to be more ambitious with the design and make a real, genuine next-gen game."

So what does that entail? According to Game Informer (via CVG), some of the characters in the upcoming game use the same number of polygons as "the whole environment" of Arkham Asylum. The end result should be a game that looks closer to pre-rendered cutscenes than ever before.

The map is also expanded, and should be five times as large as the map created for Arkham City. In addition, there are three to four times as many thugs in Gotham City compared to previous games.